The Girl Who Waited

The Doctorpointing: Appalapachia!Amy: Say it again.The Doctor: Appalapachia!Amy: Appalapa-The Doctor: Chia!Rory: Appalapachia.The Doctor: Appalapachia!Amy: Appalapachia. What a beautiful word.The Doctor: Beautiful word. Beautiful world. Appalapachia. Voted number two planet in the top ten greatest destinations for the discerning intergalactic traveler.Rory: Why couldn’t we go to number one?The Doctor: It’s hideous! Everyone goes to number one. Planet of the Coffee Shops. Appalapachia, I give you sunsets, spires, soaring silver colonnades! I give you—Rory: Doors.The Doctor: Doors. Yes, I, I give you doors. But on the other side of those doors I give you sunsets, spires, soaring silver colonnades.

Amy: Have you seen my phone?The Doctor: Your phone?Amy: Yeah.The Doctor: Your mobile telephone. I bring you to a paradise planet two billion light years from Earth and you want to update Twitter.Amy: Sunsets, spires, soaring silver colonnades. It’s a camera phone.The Doctor: On the counter by the DVDs.Amy: Thank you.

Rory: How do we get in?The Doctor: I don’t know. Push a button. {Rory pushes the green anchor button}

The Doctor: Okay so rain check on the soaring silver colonnades.Rory: Yeah.

Rory: When and wherever we are is my wife?The Doctor: Rory. I think I found her.Rory: What do you mean you found her?

Amy: And where have you been? I’ve been here a week.The Doctor: A week!Rory: A week?!The Doctor: I’m so sorry. Aha! Same room, different times. Two different time streams running parallel but at different speeds. Amy, you’re in a faster time stream!

Rory: Why has this got hands?The Doctor: Organic skin. Ultimate universal interface. Grown and grafted, not born. I mean it’s actually seeing with its fingers. Scanning the room. But why not just give it eyes?

The Doctor: Amy what exactly did you do?Amy: I just, I came in and I pressed the door button.Rory: Oh… Amy, there are two buttons. The green anchor and the red waterfall. Which one did you push?Amy: I pushed the red waterfall.

Rory: I pressed red waterfall and she wasn’t there!The Doctor: Okay. So you can’t follow her directly in. Oh, it’s never simple! Did you hear that, Hand-Bot? She pressed the wrong button, that’s all. We’re aliens. We didn’t know!Hand-Bot: Statement rejected. Appalapachia is under planet-wide quarantine. This is a kindness facility. For those infected with Chin-7.Rory: What?The Doctor: Chin-7.Rory: Hm?The Doctor: The one-day plague.Rory: You get it for a day?The Doctor: No you get it and you die in a day.Hand-Bot: There are forty thousand residents in the Two Streams facility. Please remain in the sterile areas. Visiting hours are now.

The Doctor: Chin-7 only affects two-hearted races, like Appalapachians.Rory: And Time Lords?The Doctor: Yeah, and me. Walk into that facility and I’m dead in a day.

The Doctor: That’s the point of the time glass. It syncs up the two time streams for visits. You could be in here for a day and watch them live out their entire lives.Rory: And watch them grow old in front of your eyes? That’s horrible.The Doctor: No Rory, it’s kind. You’ve got a choice. Sit by their bedside for twenty-four hours and watch them die. Or sit in here for twenty-four hours and watch them live. Which would you choose?

The Doctor: Amy, I’m taking the time glass back to the TARDIS. Like sat-nav. I can use it to get a lock on you, then smash through it, using the TARDIS to get you out. Until then you’re on your own.Rory: What are you doing?The Doctor: Locking it on to Amy. Small act of vandalism, no one will mind. {alarms go off} Ah! That would be the small act of vandalism alarm. Amy, I need you to go into the facility, just for a bit. Find somewhere safe and leave me a sign. Remember, you’re immune to Chin-7, but don’t let them give you anything. They don’t know you’re alien. Their kindness will kill you. Now. Go.

The Doctor: Ha ha! How do I look?Rory: Ridiculous.The Doctor: Glasses are cool, see? Oh yes. Hello handsome man.Rory: Hello.The Doctor: Hello, Rory-cam.Rory: Huh? {sees the monitors} Oh, you can see what I see. Fine.The Doctor: We’re breaking into two streams. Now I can’t go in there, the Chin-7 will kill me and no regeneration. You will be my eyes and ears.Rory: Rory-cam. Rescue Amy. Got it.The Doctor: That’s the spirit. Now smashing through a time wall could get a bit hairy.Rory: Is it safe?The Doctor: Dunno. Never tried. Best hold on to something.

Voice of Interface (Imelda Staunton): Welcome to the Two Streams Facility.Amy: Um, who are you and why can’t I see you?Voice: I am the interface between yourself and the systems of the Two Streams Facility. I will be your guide, your teacher, your friend.

Check-in Girl (Josie Taylor): Welcome to Two Streams. What is your name please?Amy: Amy. Amy Pond.Check-in Girl: Welcome Amy Pond. I see you are travelling alone. As a resident, you will now have access to all of the entertainment zones inside. For a taste of adventure, why not try the mountain zone, and explore Appalapachia’s famous glass mirror mountains. Or try our rollercoaster zone. Authentically modeled on the famous Warp Speed Death Ride at Disneyland Klom. All that you could wish for and more is through the departure gate. Provided for you, with kindness.

Interface: Unexpected Visitor, welcome. Please seek assistance.Amy: Hello? Hey! Oy. Wait.Hand Bot: You are carrying unregistered bacteria. Please let me help you.Amy: No. I’m not from this world. Your medicine will kill me.Hand Bot: Statement rejected. Do not be alarmed. This is a kindness.Amy: No no, please! I hate needles!

Hand Bot: This is a kindness. Do not be alarmed. This is a kindness. {Amy hides in a steam vent} No residents detected. No residents detected.

Rory: Red waterfall. We made it.The Doctor: Good on us.Rory: How do we know that we’re in the same red waterfall as Amy?The Doctor: Focus on the positive. We locked onto Amy’s time stream. {catches Rory staring at the Venus de Milo}. Eyes front, soldier!Rory: Right, yes. Sorry.

The Doctor: Appalapachians are the great cultural scavengers, Rory. This gallery’s a scrapbook of all their favorite places.Rory: Bit of Earth, bit of alien, bit of… {sees a big oozing thing} whatever the hell that is.

Amy: It is beautiful. I mean, freaky hedges…Interface: A perfect replica of the Shill Governor’s mansion on Shillana.Amy: I really could spend a lifetime here. Not that I’m going to.

Amy: Interface?Interface: Amy Pond.Amy: Listen, I need somewhere safe to hide and wait for my friends. Where in Two Streams is safe?Interface: Two Streams is a safe, nurturing environment.Amy: You know what I mean. Where can I go so the Hand-Bots can’t find me? {silence}. Um. Before, I was stood by a sort of vent and there was light and smoke and the Hand-Bots couldn’t see me. Why not? {silence}. Okay, I will put it another way. What were those vent thingies?Interface: The vents channel the exhaust fumes from the temporal engines that hold the multiple time streams in place.Amy: And these temporal engines mess up the hand bots sensors, so where’s the temporal engines?Interface: Temporal engines held within.

Rory: Where is everyone?The Doctor: All right, Rory, switch the time glass on and sonic it. I’m sending a command signal to the screwdriver. Amy’s here somewhere, if I can just get a lock on her. I wonder what happens if we mix the filters. And there they are. Forty thousand time streams overlapping. Red waterfall isn’t one time stream. It’s thousands.Rory: Are they happy?The Doctor: Oh Rory. Trust you to think of that. I think they’re happy to be alive. Better than the alternative.

Future Amy: The only way I’ve survived this long is by making the hand-bots think I don’t exist. Don’t touch the hands. There’s an anesthetic transfer in the hands. If they touch you, you go to sleep.Rory: But you’re still here.Future Amy: You didn’t save me.Rory: But this is the saving! This is the us saving you. The Doctor just got the timing a bit out!The Doctormouthing: Sorry.Future Amy: I’ve been on my own here a long long time. I’ve had decades to think nice thoughts about him, got a bit harder to stay charitable once I entered decade four.Rory: Forty years. Alone?Future Amy: Thirty-six years. Thanks.Rory: Oh. Right. I mean. You look great. Really.Future Amy: Eyes front, soldier.Rory: Still can’t win then.Future Amy: In fact I think I can now definitely say I hate him. I hate the Doctor. I hate him more than I have ever hated anyone in my life and you can here every word of this through those ridiculous glasses, can’t you, Raggedy Man?The Doctor: Ah. Yes. Putting the speakerphone on.Future Amy: You told me to wait and I did. A lifetime. You’ve got nothing to say to me?The Doctor: Amy, behind you!

Future Amy: Feedback. Knocks them out. Learned that trick on my first day.

Future Amy: I got old, Rory. What did you think was going to happen?Rory: Hey! I don’t care that you got old. I care that we didn’t grow old together. Amy, come on, please.Future Amy: Don’t touch me. Don’t do that.Rory: It’s like you’re not even her.Future Amy: Thirty-six years, three months, four days of solitary confinement. This facility was built to give people a chance to live. I walked in here and I died.

Future Amy: Oh don’t get sentimental. It’s just a robot. You’d have done the same.The Doctor: I don’t know that I would have.Future Amy: And there he is, the voice of God. Survive. Because no one’s gonna come for you. Number one lesson. You taught me that.The Doctor: Is that really all I taught you?Future Amy: Don’t you lecture me. Blue Box Man, flying through time and space on whimsy. All I’ve got, all I’ve had for thirty-six years is cold hard reality. So, no, I don’t have a sonic screwdriver because I’m not off on a romp. Call it what it is. A probe. And I call my life what it is. Hell.

Future Amy: Stay or go?Rory: Sorry, me? No. I’m coming with you.Future Amy: Then try not to get killed. Or do. Whatever.

Future Amy: They look ridiculous.Rory: That’s what I told him. Still, anything beats a fez, eh? {they both laugh} What is it?Future Amy: I think that’s the first time I’ve laughed in thirty-six years.

The Doctor: There’s still time, Amy. There’s still time to fix everything.

The Doctor: Okay, so here’s the plan: time is always a bit wibbly-wobbly, but in Two Streams it’s extra wobbly. I’ve worked out a way to hijack the temporal engines and use them to fold two points of Amy’s timeline together. We’re bringing her out of the then and into the now!

Rory: You told her to leave us a sign. And she did. And she waited. Oh Amy.

Rory: Why won’t you help yourself?Future Amy: He wants to rescue past-me from thirty-six years back which means I’ll cease to exist. Everything I’ve seen and done dissolves. Time is rewritten.Rory: That’s, that’s good, isn’t it?Future Amy: I will die. And other-Amy will take my place. An Amy who never got trapped at Two Streams. An Amy who grew old with you, and she in thirty-six years won’t be me.Rory: But you’ll die in here!Future Amy: Not if you take me with you. You came to rescue me, so rescue me.Rory: Leave her and take you?The Doctor: We could take this Amy with us, easy. But if we do then our Amy has to wait thirty-six years to be rescued.Rory: So I have to choose. Which wife do I want.Future Amy: She is me. We’re both me.Rory: You being here is wrong! For a single day, an hour. Let alone a lifetime. I swore to protect you. I promised.

The Doctor: Rory.Rory: This is your fault.The Doctor: I’m so sorry, but Rory—Rory: No! This is your fault! You should look in a history book once in awhile, see if there’s an outbreak of plague or not.The Doctor: That is not how I travel.Rory: Then I do not want to travel with you! {he throws down the glasses}

Rory: Look me in the face and say you won’t help her.Future Amy: I will not help her.

Amy: Rory, where are you?Rory: Same place as you. A bit ahead.Future Amy: I remember this.Amy: Who’s she? There’s no one else here.

Amy: Why are we still here?Future Amy: Because they leave you. Because they get in their TARDIS and they fly away.Amy: No. Rory wouldn’t. Not ever. Something must have stopped him.Future Amy: You did. Or rather, the old version of you. The me version of you. I refused to help them. I won’t let them save myself.Amy: Why?Future Amy: If you escape then I was never trapped here. The last thirty-six years of my life rewrites and I cease to exist. That’s why old me refused to help then. That’s why I’m refusing to help now. And that’s why you’ll refuse to help when it’s your turn. And nothing you can say will change that.Amy: Three words: What about Rory?Future Amy: Rory? I called my robot Rory.Amy: You called your robot Rory. So you didn’t call it the Doctor. Or Biggles. Our favorite cat?

Future Amy: All those boys chasing me, but it was only ever Rory. Why was that?Amy: You know when sometimes you meet someone so beautiful and then you actually talk to them and five minutes later they’re as dull as a brick? Then there’s other people, when you meet them you think, “Not bad. They’re okay.” And then you get to know them and… and their face just sort of becomes them. Like their personality’s written all over it. And they just turn into something so beautiful.Both: Rory’s the most beautiful man I’ve ever met.Amy: Please. Do it for him.Future Amy: Ah, you. You’re asking me to defy destiny, causality, the nexus of time itself, for a boy.Amy: You’re Amy. He’s Rory. And oh yes, I am.

Future Amy: Okay, Doctor. Two Streams is back on-air. Right, okay, so this is big news. This is temporal earthquake time. I’m now officially changing my own future. Hold on to your spectacles. In my past, I saw my future self refuse to help you. I’m now changing that future and agreeing. Every law of time says that shouldn’t be possible.The Doctor: Yes, except sometimes knowing your own future is what enables you to change it, especially if you’re bloody-minded, contradictory and completely unpredictable.Rory: So basically if you’re Amy then.The Doctor: Yes, if anyone could defeat predestiny, it’s your wife.

Future Amy: I’m trusting you to watch my back, Rory.Rory: Always. You and me, always.Future Amy: ‘Cause here’s the deal: you take me too. In the TARDIS. Me too.Rory: But that means there’ll be two of you permanently. Forever.Future Amy: And that way we both get to live.Rory: Two Amys together. Can that work?The Doctor: I don’t know. It’s your marriage.Rory: Doctor.The Doctor: Perhaps. Maybe if I shunted the reality compensators on the TARDIS, recalibrated the Doomsday bumpers and jettisoned the karaoke bar, yes. Maybe, yes. It could do it. The TARDIS could sustain the paradox.

Amy: So you think you’re going to come with us, just like that?Future Amy: Yeah. Just like that.Amy: Rory, talk to her.Future Amy: Rory, talk to her.Rory: Now, ladies.

Amy: Where are you going to live?Future Amy: Not with you, don’t worry. I’ll go travelling. Pop back for Christmas, maybe Easter.Rory: Amy, you always said cooking Christmas dinner you wish there were two of you.

The Doctor: I’m sorry.Rory: What are you doing?The Doctor: I lied to her, Rory. There can never be two Amys in the TARDIS. The paradox would be too massive.Rory: You can’t leave her, she’ll die!The Doctor: No, she’ll never have existed. When we save our Amy this future won’t have happened.Rory: She happened! She’s there!Future Amy: I trusted you!The Doctor: No, she’s not real.Rory: She is real. Let her in.The Doctor: Look, we keep this Amy, we leave ours. There can only be one Amy in the TARDIS. Which one do you want?! {he puts Rory’s hand on the lock} Your choice.Rory: This isn’t fair. You’re turning me into you.

Future Amy: The look on your face when you carried her… me… her. When you carried her, you used to look at me like that. I’d forgotten how much you loved me. I’d forgotten how much I loved being her. Amy Pond in the TARDIS with Rory Williams.Rory: I’m sorry, I can’t do this.Future Amy: If you love me, don’t let me in. Open that door, I will. I’ll come in. I don’t want to die. I won’t bow out bravely, I’ll scream and fight to the end.Rory: Amy. Amy I love you.Future Amy: I love you too. Don’t let me in. Tell Amy—your Amy—I’m giving her the days. The days with you. Days to come. The days I can’t have. Take them please. I’m giving her my days.Rory: I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.

Hand Bot: Do not be alarmed. This is a kindness.Future Amy: Interface?Interface: I am here, Amy Pond.Future Amy: Show me Earth. Show me home. Did I ever tell you about this boy I met there, who pretended to be in a band….

Rory: Did you always know it would never work. Saving both Amys?The Doctor: I promised you I would save her and there she is. Safe.Rory: Yeah. There she is.